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VocalWriter 3.0
is a new version of KAE Labs' VocalWriter singing music synthesizer, which holds the distinction of being the first synth of its kind. Unlike the original Mac OS Classic (VocalWriter 1.0) and Mac OS X (VocalWriter 2.0) versions of VocalWriter, this new version is fully compatible with versions of Mac OS X later than Snow Leopard (10.6) and with Windows XP, 7, 8, 8.1, and 10. For those of you who don't know how VocalWriter works, the program allows you to create MIDI songs featuring instruments, drums, and most importantly, robotic voices that sing lyrics. The voices range from human-like robot voices to "singing instruments" (such as a singing piano, singing trumpet, singing guitar, etc.). You input notes to a song, assign lyrics to the notes, and the voices sing. You can also use pitch bends and portamento effects to make the VocalWriter voices speak. Unfortunately, due to being a program only compatible with old Apple computers and due to its existence being overshadowed by popular Japanese singing synthesizers like VOCALOID, UTAU and AquesTone, VocalWriter is extremely obscure and is not very popular. VocalWriter is mildly popular in Japan though, as composer for BEMANI arcade games (like Dance Dance Revolution, Pop'n Music, Beatmania IIDX, etc.) Seiya Murai utilizes VocalWriter's "Sarah" voice in several of his songs. However, nobody knows about VocalWriter itself, but rather the Sarah voice, as Seiya Murai's songs featuring VocalWriter are credited to "seiya-murai feat.ALT" after Alt, a character from Pop'n Music whose singing (and speaking!) voice was provided by Sarah. Therefore, a new version of VocalWriter released worldwide for both Windows and Mac OS could help raise public awareness of it. (It could be touted in Japan as "the true voice of Alt".) Information *VocalWriter 3.0 will feature an interface exactly like that of its previous incarnations, but with a more modern feel and look. *The singing instruments and 7 original human-like voices will still be present. They will have a few changes, but will still sound no different and be as adorably robotic as ever. Here are the changes and additions: **Sarah will be renamed "Sarah (ALT)" for the reason stated above. **Two new voices will be added: "Emily", a female child-like robot voice; and "Kevin", a male robot voice sounding more like that of a teenage boy/young man than the existing "Andy" voice, which sounds like a woman sometimes. *It will be officially released in English, Japanese, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, and Chinese, with the ability for the user to input text in any of those languages and have VocalWriter's phonemes pronounce the text correctly for any of those languages. **As VocalWriter was released as a synthesizer to sing English lyrics, and many seiya-murai feat.ALT songs are in Japanese, Seiya Murai probably had to do a lot of work editing the phonemes of his songs to make VocalWriter (ALT) sing in Japanese. Having VocalWriter have support for multiple languages will be more convenient for a worldwide release, as less phoneme editing is required. *The ability to switch between time signatures and tempos within a song will be added. *The MIDI instruments will be of a higher quality. This includes there being various different-sounding drum sets. *The phoneme "EM" is added (as in "rhyth'm'", "aut'umn'", and "keep 'em"). This phoneme can also be used to produce humming. *The demo songs will be the same as the previous releases of VocalWriter's demo songs, but with a few new songs added to showcase the following features: **switching tempo/time signatures **Emily and Kevin **"I Speak Six Languages" from The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee to showcase the foreign languages (sung by Sarah/ALT) **a song with humming/"EM" phoneme Category:Music